Before you’d see her erupt from a corner, you’d hear the
Drumming of her headaches, her pulse in her temples, the
Sick stomach, heart on her sleeve, lips out in the open, smudged, you
Feel her coming towards you before she becomes visible to anyone,
To you. And you become a part of her with every step that she takes.
She involves the whole world and what is shattered within herself must
Break on the outside as well, nothing is more important to her than her survival.
A statue that has been mummified and resurrected, the woman’s flesh,
The shaking collarbone, the spine, erected, sadistic, overarching the streets,
You submit to her pain, to her lack of love, to the abandonment of her skin,
The grey colour of her veins, time standing still and crouching backwards, the
Agonising never-ending past, in her fingers, her tongue, her fragrant hair, she
Is made of dust and despair. Her solitude fills the air and poisons her own lungs.
She’ll stand defragmented, absorbing all the life she can get, collapsing within her body.
She walks across the square and you think that she is going to die any second now.
Evanesce without recreation, fall apart from the tension and the pressure, succumb
To the devils inside of her, the voices of mothers, the blows of fathers, the blanketed
Child, held against a stomping, suffocating chest, the neediness unbearable, unjustifiable.
I’ll take you with me to my grave. I’ll take you with me to my grave. The undigested
Lullaby, never to lie still, to be eaten alive by the caressing hands, the lips that kiss and
Slide, the tongue carving out the demons within her soul, the stench of heartache.
She slithers through all spaces, wanting to belong and manifest that she is not herself.
“Ayesha” by Valentine Cameron Prinsep (1838-1904)
Croque-Melpomene 